29 August, 2013

My father, the writer D'Arcy Niland, grew up in a household where books were a rarity. When he had a family of his own, he would often frequent the local second-hand bookshops and bring home boxes of books to add to our home library.

The titles varied from the weird to classic, to fiction and non-fiction. Books of poetry stood next to titles like Monsters of the Deep. It was a treasure trove to our family growing up.
There was always a book on hand to suit the mood.

It also encouraged a love of history, science, natural history, humour, poetry and songs.

So it was one of these books plucked from a shelf that inspired our illustrated version of Mulga Bill's Bicycle.

That book was Rio Grande's Last Race and other Verses by A B Paterson. The edition I have is a very old copy, dated 1924.

In the last few years historical research has become easier online, as many libraries and institutions are digitising their records, books and newspapers. When researching the background of the poem Mulga Bill's Bicycle, I found a small newspaper item from The Sydney Morning Herald, 17th July 1896.

As the first illustrator of this poem was Norman Hardy, I did a little research on this artist as well.
This item is from The Sydney Mail, 8th January, 1898.

07 May, 2013

Annie's Chair is the title one of my children's books which I wrote and illustrated. First published in 2005 by Penguin Group Australia, it has been incredibly successful with editions published in Korea, China, USA and Canada.

I have received some lovely letters and emails from kids about this book.

The amazing thing is that this book has been in continuous print since 1973. I believe it is quite rare to have a picture book still in print after all these years.

Mulga Bill's Bicycle is the name of a poem written in 1896 by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson.

This picture-book version of Banjo Paterson's poem was illustrated by my sister Kilmeny and me and first published by William Collins (Australia) Ltd in 1973.

To celebrate this book's long life, I thought I would post, at intervals, various snippets and original sketches which relate to the finished illustrations. I would also like to make up some activity sheets for kids to download and print.

18 February, 2013

I've been looking through a lot of my older work of late, scanning and sorting.

The works below are from a title published way back last century, in 1974.
The title of the book is Tell Me A Tale, stories retold and copyrighted by Jean Chapman and illustrations copyrighted by Deborah and Kilmeny Niland.

It's weird looking at your ownl work again after such a long time. It was gratifying to see that the originals are so much finer and delicate as compared with the printed version. As an illustrator you tend to forget that the printed work can be quite dissimilar to the original art.

Printing methods today are so much better which means good quality is more easily achievable in book production.

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Illustrator, Author and Artist.
A close look at published and unpublished illustrations from my work and others. Also a gander at sketchbooks and scribblings which are sitting in the back of my cupboard.